Whale Deities Of Sky And Sea: Links Across The Legend

It’s fascinating to find similarities between Zelda titles that some fans may not think of or realize, and one of those similarities that a few Zelda games have in common is as big as a whale.

Five Zelda titles feature giant whales, and I often wonder if they’re connected. The Hyrule Historia doesn’t say that they all are, so everything below is mostly observation, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for a connection to exist between these five whales.

Levias

Chronologically, Levias is the first of five giant marine mammals to appear in the Zelda universe. He’s an old whale that flies through the air near Skyloft.

He’s already ancient when Link meets him, and he is also the appointed guardian of the skies, made so by the goddess Hylia.

Link eventually saves him from a parasite, and the flying whale helps lead the hero to the Triforce by teaching him the final piece of a vital song he needs.

How exactly a gigantic deity flies through the sky is unknown, but nonetheless, Levias manages to move through the clouds as a real whale does through the ocean. A whale is a interesting creature to make the guardian of the skies because as we all know, they’re supposed to be water-dwelling creatures only. Then again, islands aren’t supposed to float in the sky, either, and Hylia still managed to put an entire village up in the air.

We don’t know if Levias was created by Hylia or if he already existed, and she just appointed him to become the guardian of the skies. Perhaps he was a normal whale, and she gave him the ability to fly and live outside of the water. I am personally convinced that Levias already existed when Hylia decided to create Skyloft, and he was a normal water-dwelling mammal. After all, there is an ocean in Skyward Sword… or at least there used to be.

The Lanayru Sand Sea used to be an ocean, but it eventually changed and became a desert. It’s entirely conceivable to me that Levias could have been a normal whale inside that ocean. Perhaps when it started to dry up and become a desert, Hylia took pity on Levias and gave him the ability to fly, making him the guardian of the skies above.

Either way, his flying ability makes him similar to another marine mammal presented in a much later game.

The Wind Fish

Appearing in the timeline where the Hero of Time dies during the final fight with Ganon is the Wind Fish. He comes along in Link’s Awakening.

Though he is called the Wind Fish, he actually has the appearance of a whale (his tail fin is horizontal instead of vertical).

In Link’s Awakening, the hero, who had just set sail from Labrynna after saving Nayru, gets caught in a storm, and his ship is destroyed.

Link awakens on an island called Koholint and comes to learn that he is trapped inside the dream of a deity called the Wind Fish. In order to escape back to reality, he has to collect instruments and wake the Wind Fish from his nightmare.

The Wind Fish, like Levias, has the ability to fly. This is shown in the end after Link returns to the real world and sees the Wind Fish flying above him in the sky.

Because of the deity’s ability to fly, the Wind Fish and Levias could be one and same. If Levias and the Wind Fish are the same, it’s poetic that a future incarnation of Link saves him, just like his predecessor.

I could definitely be persuaded to believe that Levias and the Wind Fish are one and the same. If they are, it would paint a truly sad reality for Levias. Hypothetically, Hylia makes him an ageless deity when she gives him the ability to fly and makes him guardian of the skies. So, he flies around for a few centuries, protecting the area around Skyloft fulfilling his purpose, glad he was saved from the horrible fate of dying in an evaporated ocean that had become a desert.

Eventually, though, Link and Zelda come along, and they inadvertently start the migration of Hylians back to the ground. Skyloft, within a few decades, becomes an abandoned town floating above the land that will turn into Hyrule. Where does this leave Levias? Alone and without a purpose.

He flies around with nothing to do and no people to watch over until he can’t take it anymore. He leaves the skies above Hyrule and through the ages finds himself over an ocean somewhere between Hyrule and Labrynna. Perhaps adding to his depression is the fact that he can’t swim anymore. He longs for nothing more than to return to the sea and rest in peace, but because of Hylia’s changes to his body, he can do neither. He is stuck living on in the sky over the ocean with no hope for a serene ending.

What happens to him from there? Well, he flies over the ocean and eventually settles into a deep slumber. In his slumber, an island is created. He once again has people to protect. The paradise quickly changes into a nightmare, though, and it’s one he cannot escape from on his own.

Taking pity on the marine mammal that Hylia promoted to a deity, the goddesses send a future incarnation of Link to rescue the wayward whale. They trap Link in a storm, destroy his ship, and ensure he ends up in the same dream world as the Wind Fish to remind him that his job is not over. What his future job is, I don’t know. Maybe he’ll return some day. Or, perhaps the goddesses finally allowed him to somehow rest in peace.

Lord Jabu-Jabu

Lord Jabu-Jabu is the host of the third dungeon in Ocarina of Time, and he is a deity, of sorts, to the Zora people. The Zora worship him, and in turn, he agrees to swallow their annoying princess that they could no longer stand (joke).

In Ocarina of Time, Lord Jabu-Jabu isn’t shown to have the ability to fly. Instead, he floats in the water outside of Zora’s Domain.

The interesting thing about Lord Jabu-Jabu is that he disappears in the adult timeline. After Link becomes an adult, Ganondorf freezes Zora’s Domain, effectively killing all but three inhabitants (King Zora, Princess Ruto, and the Zora shopkeeper).

If Link goes outside to where Lord Jabu-Jabu was located in the child timeline, the whale is gone. Did Ganondorf kill him? Perhaps. A chunk of ice exists where the whale used to be. It’s entirely possible that the evil king did kill Lord Jabu-Jabu.

And in my opinion, out of all the whales, Lord Jabu-Jabu seemed to be the most useless. The Zoras worship h

im, but what does he really do? Does he keep the water clean that flows out of Zora’s Domain? I can’t see any evidence that shows the whale serves some purpose. The Zoras feed him fish, and he was stupid enough to eat Princess Ruto (yeah yeah, he was sick and had jellyfish inside of him).

The more I think about it, the less Lord Jabu-Jabu makes sense. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t move. He just sits in one spot and eats. How did he get where he is? There’s no other connecting body of water for him to get in and out of. Was the area north of Zora’s Domain once part of a larger water system that grew smaller and trapped him? I guess that’s always possible. I doubt the goddesses created him to protect the Zora like Hylia did with Levias (and if they did, Lord Jabu-Jabu did a pretty shitty job since all but three zoras died).

I guess we’ll never know for sure, but I think Ganondorf killed Lord Jabu-Jabu. I’ll talk about his connection to Jabun later, but for now consider the following: Ganondorf freezes Zora’s Domain and kills all but three Zora. Why wouldn’t he finish off Lord Jabu-Jabu?

The only other explanation I could think of that explains his disappearance in the adult timeline is maybe the Great Fairy saved him. There is a fountain north of Zora’s Domain (Link obtains Farore’s Wind there). Maybe the fairy inside somehow teleported Lord Jabu-Jabu to safety.

Jabun

Perhaps it isn’t fair to call Jabun a whale, as his appearance is more like that of an angler fish. He appears in the adult timeline during Wind Waker.

Jabun, like Lord Jabu-Jabu, also displays no flying abilities.

Unlike the possible connection between the Wind Fish and Levias, the connection between Lord Jabu-Jabu and Jabun appears to be a little more solid.

The Hyrule Hystoria states that Jabun is thought to be a descendant of Lord Jabu-Jabu. Unlike his alleged ancestor, though, Jabun speaks (ancient Hylian), and his appearance is quite different. The Wind Fish and Levias (aside from a pair of tiny wings) appear somewhat similar, in my opinion.

That said, Lord Jabu-Jabu and Jabun look almost nothing alike, aside from being large.

One of the issues I take with Jabun being a descendant of Lord Jabu-Jabu is that the former closely resembles a whale, and the latter resembles an Angler Fish. Why doesn’t Jabun look more similar to his alleged ancestor?

Another issue is the perceived intelligence and usefulness compared between the two. Jabun actually talks and keeps one of the three pearls needed in the game that holds the key to accessing the Tower of the Gods. He’s essential to the quest, and he seems to display a wise caution.

Furthermore, he had enough power to sense when Ganon was coming to kill him, and he left the area.

Still, the two do share a very similar name. What’s more, King Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule (king of Hyrule when the land flooded) knew Jabun. This may indicate the king knew the water deity before the land flooded… perhaps when the ocean-dweller was a Lake Hylia dweller or a Zora’s Domain dweller.

The puzzling thing about figuring out Jabun’s connection to Lord Jabu-Jabu comes from his knowledge of the Hero of Time. As fans know, when Zelda sent Link back in time to his childhood at the end of Ocarina of Time, it created a world without Link that allowed for Ganon to eventually reappear.

How does the whale have knowledge of the Hero of Time? Did the king tell him? Did he hear the legends from villagers on his island? Was he alive at some point when the Hero of Time was questing to defeat Ganondorf?

I don’t know if I believe Jabun is a descendant of Lord Jabu-Jabu. Aside from the problems I listed above, there is the issue of biology. Lord Jabu-Jabu would have needed a mate to knock up in order for Jabun to be created as a descendant. Where in Hyrule would the giant whale have found someone to mate with? (And if someone in the comments says Ruto, I’m going to hunt them down and punch them in the face.)

The bottom line is: Nintendo says Jabun is THOUGHT to be a descendant of Lord Jabu-Jabu, but for all we know, that could be misguided information spread by the Hylian descendants. Perhaps they heard the legends of a giant whale worshipped by the Zora people. Then, when Jabun appeared, they just assumed the two were connected. It is possible that Hyrule flooded and then Jabun swam over from a completely different body of water now connected to Hyrule via a newly flooded area.

Ocean King

The Ocean King appears in Phantom Hourglass, the immediate sequel to Wind Waker. Like the Wind Fish, he exists in a separate world from Link’s reality, and the Hero of the Winds must save him from an evil dream god named Bellum.

Link, being the hero, rescues the Ocean King, and he reveals his true form, a giant white whale.

While the Ocean King may not bear any obvious references to a past giant marine mammal in Hyrule, he does have one thing in common with the Wind Fish. They both appear to be able to create their own worlds.

This has led some fans to believe that they are one and the same, just in two different timelines. I can see where some people could get that theory. Both the Wind Fish and Ocean King do suffer a similar fate within dream worlds, both are found out in the ocean, and both are rescued by incarnations of Link riding on a boat. Considering all three of those factors, I’d at least be willing to entertain that they could be the same deity, just paralleled in different timelines.

Are all the marine mammals connected? Are none of them connected? Until Nintendo says one way or another, it’s all just interesting speculation, but that’s one of the things I love to do most in the Zelda series is speculate.

According to the Hyrule Historia, only two of the whales appear to have a solid connection, and that is Lord Jabu-Jabu and Jabun. They even share a similar name. The other three… well any fan’s guess is as good as mine.